Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams addressed the synod of Catholic bishops on the New Evangelization about the importance of contemplation for reaching people in a post-Christian world.

“To be contemplative as Christ is contemplative is to be open to all the fullness that the Father wishes to pour into our hearts,” the archbishop said Oct. 10. “With our minds made still and ready to receive, with our self-generated fantasies about God and ourselves reduced to silence, we are at last at the point where we may begin to grow.”

He said people recognize in contemplative practices the possibility of “living more humanly” with “space for stillness” and with an awareness of “solid and durable joy” discovered in the disciplines of self-forgetfulness. Contemplating God in Jesus, he declared, teaches Christians “how to look at one another and at the whole of God’s creation.”

“To put it boldly, contemplation is the only ultimate answer to the unreal and insane world that our financial systems and our advertising culture and our chaotic and unexamined emotions encourage us to inhabit,” the Anglican archbishop said. His comments referenced key Catholic theologians and writers like Henri de Lubac, Thomas Merton.

He suggested “serious work” to examine how ecumenical, shared contemplative practices can help reach out to lapsed Christians and a “post-Christian public.”

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